Friday, October 26, 2012

Was Rexall, Now Blockheads

Something about the Blockheads sign on Second Avenue and East 50th Street doesn't seem quite right. It looks like an old sign. But it also doesn't. The sheet metal wrapping the sides of its distinctive silhouette looks like it's been around a while. But the aluminum sign faces and the lettering are clearly not very old, nor has Blockheads (a local chain of Mexican restaurants) been around all that long (their web site dates the chain's inception to 1989). So I never counted it in my survey of New York's old neon signs.

Ex-Rex at 954 Second Ave. (T. Rinaldi)

Then I saw this: a pizza joint sign in Mundelein, Illinois, surveyed by Debra Jane Seltzer this past August.

Bill's Pizza and Fabulous Hot Dogs, in Mundelein, ILL. (Debra Jane Seltzer)This is actually, as Debra Jane immediately recognized, an ex-Rexall Drugs sign re-lettered for the pizza joint. Aha! Rexall affiliates hung signs of this standard design all over the country (Debra Jane has compiled a gallery – actually four galleries - of them here). At least two of them have been recycled in this way.

A Rexall sign in its original livery, at Stewart Drugs in Lexington, Tennessee. (Debra Jane Seltzer)The question is: was this Second Avenue storefront a Rexall before Blockheads came along? Or did Blockheads just salvage this old sign from someplace else and hang it here? The 1980s tax photos at the Municipal Archives web site are just plain too fuzzy to solve this mystery, though there does appear to be a sign of about the same size and shape in place here. Do any east side old timers know the answer?SPECIAL THANKS to Debra Jane Seltzer for lending the photos in this post. NEW YORK NEON IN THE NEWS:

•Very nice coverage of New York Neon in Friday's (10/19/12) New York Times, in Eve Kahn's Antiques Column.

IN OTHER NEON NEWS:

•Further down 2nd Ave, some neon and other signs in photographs by Jim and Karla Murray.

ABOUT

New York Neon is a new book released by W.W. Norton that presents a documentary homage to old neon signs in New York. The primary motivation for this project is to record the significance of these signs as works of design that characterized New York's 20th century streetscapes. This blog will feature occasional news items related to New York's dwindling number of old neon signs, as well as sundry "cutting room floor" items that didn't make it into the book.